Years ago I told my parents what I wanted to study, music. My father was very much against it; in fact he laughed at me saying “You couldn’t even play Yankee Doodle Dandy on the piano if I asked you to.” My how this hurt, but I didn’t stop believing in myself, that I had music within me. He even made the comment at the time, that how could I have musical talent; no one else in my family was a musician.

Tonight, I shake my head. Yeah, I just deleted over two years worth of work; but I only did it because I know I can do better; and that I can do it now in far less time. “Don’t loose the hope”- these are words I would have never imagined my father would would say to me. The real funny thing is, though, that my Dad told me tonight that my grandfather, his dad; played in a band, he played the saxophone. Funny, why would he have kept this from me and even gone as far to tell me that no one in my family was musical. I think I’ll go, and start a new project. I will keep the name though, “years prior…”

There’ve been many books documenting the life of Steve Jobs, attempts to worm inside of Steve’s brain. The NYT reports that Walter Isaacson, Time magazine’s former managing editor, will write the first authorized biography, however. Steve’s supposedly invited Isaacson to tour his childhood home, even. I wonder what kind of conditions Isaacson had to agreed to in order for this to happen.

Isaacson’s previous two bestselling biographes were about Ben Franklin and Albert Einstein, if that tells you anything. [NYT]

]]> http://maeghan.me/2010/02/steve-jobs-the-authorized-biography-coming-to-ibooks-and-other-fine-establishments-apple-gizmodo/feed 0 http://maeghan.me/2010/02/its-my-happy-little-family-all-cuddled-up http://maeghan.me/2010/02/its-my-happy-little-family-all-cuddled-up#comments Sat, 13 Feb 2010 07:20:30 +0000 maeghan http://maeghan.posterous.com/its-my-happy-little-family-all-cuddled-up

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The Senate is closing in on a health care bill with a public health insurance option, a key ingredient of meaningful health care reform.

But conservatives and insurance companies are fighting hard against the public option, so Senate leadership has compromised by including an “opt-out” clause, which would allow individual states to choose not to participate in the program.^[1]

There’s a real danger here. In the stimulus fight, we saw Republican governors and legislators refuse federal dollars for political gain. The same thing could happen with health care reform, with everday people in states like Lousiana, Alabama, and South Carolina — states with large Black, poor, and working-class populations — left out.^[2]

That’s why I’ve joined ColorOfChange.org’s campaign calling on Congress and the White House to make the public option available everywhere. Please join me:

http://www.colorofchange.org/healthcare/?id=2172-1174713

I understand the need for compromise and negotiation, but I also want to make sure that no community gets negotiated away in the process.

Including “opt-out” may be the best way to get a bill through the Senate with a public option–but that won’t be the end of the process, and it doesn’t mean “opt-out” will be in the final bill. The House still needs to decide exactly what will be in its health care bill. And once both the House and the Senate have passed legislation, they’ll have to negotiate with each other, and the White House, to reconcile the differences between the two bills.

That’s why we need to make it clear that we’re watching and that we will demand a public option that’s available in every state. Please join me in sending this message to Congress and the White House, and ask your friends and family to do the same:

http://www.colorofchange.org/healthcare/?id=2172-1174713

Thank you.

References:

1. “So what is the ‘opt-out’ compromise?” Talking Points Memo, 10-26-2009
http://tinyurl.com/yjffquq

2. “Public option opt out denies help to those who need it most,” Fire Dog Lake, 10-8-2009
http://tinyurl.com/yks5sxz

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Here’s an outstanding project for all you Star Wars fans.  This guy took an R2D2 cooler and turned it into a retro gaming machine!  Inside are eight consoles and a even a projector mounted in the head just like R2D2.  Perfect!  Now you can have a personal gaming robot to follow you around and fulfill all your nostalgic gaming desires.  Unfortunately, these are all the pics and info we have about the project right now.

Don’t miss:  DIY Retro Gaming Projects

R2D2 Innards:

We can take a look at the guts of the system (minus the projector) and see the wild mess of cables, fans, and retro consoles.  It’s definitely a fantastic feat of engineering to get all of them to fit in such a small space and then have an R2D2 head-mount projector and built in sound system to work on top of it all.  Take a look at some of our related Star Wars projects:

How to: DIY Star Wars Lightsabers
Impressive LEGO Star Wars Scene with LEDs
Star Wars Nintendo Wii Case Mod

Posted via web from maeghan’s posterous

A good example of this would be ’seeing’ sound.   The film is absolutely phenomenal and is well worth a watch.

Check it out here: